It is hard to believe that Tengil once started as raucous hardcore band. Fortunately there is little to notice about that these days. Initially we hear that the drummer cuts loose in opener ‘I Dreamt I Was Old’, but soon it is smoothened with organ. This is really a weird outfit, hailing from Sweden. The atmospheric, experimental music goes into all kinds of directions and the sweet emo chants are sometimes painfully sentimental. Think of Mercury Rev.

The backbone of Tengil happens to be a wall of sound that will appeal to post rock / post metal aficionados, although the band does not shun any U2 influences either, witnessed by ‘And The Best Was Yet To Come’: razor sharp guitars and a decisive vocalist that rules. Lots of drama in his performance, he claims all the attention. Until the next tsunami of guitars takes him by surprise and the whole thing explodes into a fluttering psychedelic Walhalla. Some chaotic tendencies are not strange to them. Every time they return to quiescent passages where vocals are dominant. Through the calm, atmospheric ‘All For The Myth’ even the ghost of pragmatic spoken word performances wanders freely. For the time being, it all sounds a bit too chaotic to be led away in this wide range of different sounds, but maybe these Swedes will find the right dose of refinement and chaos on a next album in order to canalize their charms.